The promos sounded like a lower-scale, lower-budgeted rehash of the premise of KING RALPH with John Goodman, Peter O'Toole and John Hurt; I soon realized this wasn't quite the case or presented as that kind of LOL comedy, but I still got a lot more LOL moments than I expected. A large part of that is that I've been calling the Greater Philadelphia Metro Region home for the past 55 years and have many friends who are from South Philly or are first-generation children of transplants from South Philly to the South Jersey suburbs where I grew up. If there's going to be a culture clash between British aristocracy and an American-born heir, I can't think of a character that would bring sparks to that clash, more than Ralph the Las Vegas lounge singer, than a working stiff from South Philly. Small references to South Philly from protagonist Johnny in reply to his snooty cousin Allistair brought the biggest laughs such as the one after Allistair identifies himself as being of "Winshere, north of Devon". (I have to give kudos to Andrew Walker for NOT trying too hard to do a South Philly accent. Most actors not native to the PA-NJ-NY region end up not getting the subtle differences between the accents that are most concentrated, and end up overdoing it AND coming off with a Brooklyn or Bayonne NJ accent instead!)
The characters are engaging and most are likeable, and their actors have excellent chemistry. That between Andrew Walker (Johnny) and Emilie de Ravin (Prudence) is particularly involving. The characters are dynamic in the true old high school Language Arts class sense of changing due to the events of the story. Many of the "snooty" aristocratic characters end up not being as stereotypical as initially presented.
Just a little note here. Some of the reviewers mention the ridiculous notion that Johnny supposedly got his horseback riding skills to help another rider in distress by being the mechanical bull riding champion at his South Philly bar. Just thought I'd mention that the Pennsylvania Army National Guard has an Armored Cavalry squadron in Philadelphia that has a rather elaborate ceremonial horse team; if the writers had been aware of that fact, they could have made Johnny a former enlisted member (say a tank mechanic) of that unit and have gotten his riding skills with that horse team, a much more plausible/credible explanation. (I myself organized a much smaller, lower-budgeted and less elaborate horse team within my old New Jersey National Guard unit.)
I'll say this is one of the best Working Class American amid stuffy European Royalty movies Hallmark has ever done. One star off for the silly mechanical bull story. (And do I mean BULL!)
